Wodwo
by Thethuthinnang
Summary: BtVS.LotR. A drum in the dark, a whisper in the wood.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Wiglaf put a foot to the Dunlending's hip, wrenched free the spearhead lodged in his gut, spat a mouthful of blood, and raised his head to hear the drone of a far-off horn.

He staggered to a halt, the standard sagging in his grip. Wiglaf heard the howls, the answering blasts of the nearer enemy horns, and wiped the blood from his eyes to see Orcs and Dunlendings splashing through the currents of the Isen, back to the eastern shore, screaming at each other in panic and alarm. Beside him, Theodred pulled his blade from the hacked skull of an Uruk-hai mouth-foamer and shouted for the men to regroup beneath the standard. Wiglaf hastily raised and steadied the spear and banner he carried, the silk fluttering in the wind.

Grimbold found them a moment later, his beard and hair red up to his chin and helm. When he spoke, his rasping tone was almost questioning. "They flee."

Theodred was looking after the retreating foe, his expression somewhere between a scowl and a worried frown. When he answered, his voice was so low that none of the others could hear but Grimbold—and Wiglaf, who happened to be standing behind them. "Aye, they flee, when only an hour longer and they would have taken the field."

Wiglaf scraped back his hair, throwing down a handful of slimy blood, both red and black. His helm had been lost almost two hours since.

The hill was a mound of bodies, Orcish and Mannish. The other men were beginning to draw back up in their lines, raked and haggard and all perplexed. They grouped behind the Prince and Grimbold by clan, each looking for his own banner, and Wiglaf saw that many horses had been killed, for few now were still mounted. He himself had seen the Prince's mare speared out from under him, could still hear Theodred's cry of anguish. In his head, it was answered by his own grief, the memory of his own horse, his own Esa, collapsing of three spears to the neck.

Now, they both stood on foot at the top of the hill they had been fighting on for nearly five hours, at the top of a heap of corpses, staring eastward at the backs of the scattered troops of Isengard as they surged through the water and back over the ford, their shrieks and yowls skirling in the air like fetid smoke.

Theodred was clutching at his arm. Wiglaf leaned forward, attempted to look at the wound, and the Prince shrugged him off with a curt "Let me be, boy."

Grimbold was looking fixedly into the distance. "My lord," he said, and something in his voice made the men who heard it go quiet, made their heads, all of them, turn as one.

Theodred lifted his head. Wiglaf craned his neck, pulling himself up by the haft of the standard, trying to see what these two grown men, taller than him by a head, were seeing.

A hush swept through the ranks. Those on horseback began pointing.

To the East, perhaps a mile away, the retreating Orcs, Dunlendings, and Uruk-hai had stopped. The black figures clumped, roiling violently into one dark shape that swarmed, and on a stray wind they heard, faint and shrill, the clash of steel.

"Someone has come," said Grimbold disbelievingly. "Someone is attacking from the East!"

Wiglaf felt his heart lift. Someone had come! The men looked at each other, and a weak cheer went up. He glanced out of the corner of his eyes to see that Theodred was staring at the shapes on the horizon, at the unmistakable signs of battle.

"Who could have come?" Grimbold was saying. "From the East? There is nothing there but—"

"Dunlendings and Elves," said Theodred harshly, "and neither disposed to come to do us any kindnesses."

The hill was beginning to reek of death, through even the bitter cold of Ninui. Wiglaf shifted his feet, slogged through the bloody mud to plant the standard in the slightly drier ground beside the Prince. The silk flapped in the raw wind over their heads.

The cries of the wounded moved Theodred into action. He called out for a detail of men to remove the hurt back onto the western shores, with a contingent of spearmen to guard them. The horses were to be gathered and counted, and riders were sent out to see the lay of the land behind them and search for sign of Elfhelm and his Riders, who were supposed to be fortifying the Hornburg, or of Eomer, who was coming from Edoras with reinforcements.

To the front, to the East, seethed the battle on the border of sight, and all anyone could see were the churning hordes of the enemy.

Wiglaf stood his ground and held the standard.

Nearly a half an hour hence, it was Grimbold again who shouted first. _"They break!"_

All movement on the hill ceased and men stretched their necks. Prince Theodred turned from his captains to hurry up to Grimbold's side, glaring into the distance.

Wiglaf saw the shapes scattering, saw that the throng that had fled East was now nothing more than dark figures breaking away and flying North, and could not resist joining his voice to the hoarse cheer that shook the hill.

He was not sure what he expected to see, then. The shining lengths of elven spears, the curve of elven bows? Perhaps the tall helms of Gondor, appearing like a conjuration out of the South? Perhaps even a clan of Dunlendings, come out of Dunland to fight for purposes of their own, though this would have meant another hard battle for the Eorlingas on the heels of the earlier scrap?

"Ranks," shouted Theodred, "ranks! Archers to the front!"

The captains took up the cry, and within moments all were sorted. Wiglaf had his position behind Theodred, who had refused all the horses offered to him and now gripped a spear on the ground, and then they waited in tense silence for whatever would come.

In the distance, unfamiliar shapes began appearing in clumps. These were small and unfamiliar, too far-flung for even the sharpest of eyes among the archers, and they moved over the earth with a swiftness that made Wiglaf's breath catch in his throat.

"Mounted," said Grimbold quietly. "Look! Look how they fly!"

The strange shapes were riding after the scatting Orcs and Dunlendings, and overtook the exhausted, battle-weary troops easily. As the Eorlingas watched, the creatures of Saruman fell in droves, often long before their pursuers had even closed with them.

"Mounted archers," murmured Theodred. "Archers who kill with every shot."

Suddenly, before Wiglaf even realized it was over, the battle had ended. The fields of the eastern horizon was littered with unmoving black shapes, and moving more slowly among them were the unknown conquerors. These did not continue West or North, but gathered again at the site where they had first appeared, responding to a signal none of the Eorlingas could see or hear.

"My lord," said Grimbold, "if they come this way..."

Theodred said nothing, but the men looked at each other and tightened their grips on their spears and swords. Wiglaf exhaled shakily and steadied the standard.

The dark shapes had formed one, giant multitude, a host that now stood still in the distance, and Wiglaf felt a chill down his back to see how many there were. Beside him, Theodred's breath remained regular and unbroken, his face quiet and resolute, and Wiglaf saw how the other men saw this and took heart.

They waited, the hill a mound of hoar-white corpses.

Then, in the air, out of the East—

They heard it, all of them, every man still standing.

The call of a horn, low and uncanny, a sound deep and weird that seemed to rise up out of the depths of a well. It hung, glimmering, a darkling voice, and beneath it, swelling up to meet the dreadful call, came the numberless howls of a thousand ululating throats, full of menace and nameless doom, and with them the drums that filled the nightmares of Eorlingan children.

The men swayed as if stricken by blows, and Wiglaf felt his own face grow cold and bloodless. When he looked, Theodred's own skin had whitened, his eyes dark with the old dread bred into every son of Eorl since the time of the Eotheod.

There was no one of the Eorlingas who did not know those drums.

It was Grimbold who put the name to them.

"Drugin," he whispered, his voice a grating croak. "Pukel."

Then, even as they watched, even as a Rider came splashing back into the waters of the Isen from the East, even as they heard the first horns of the coming of Eomer and aid, they looked to the horizon and saw that the strangers, the unknown riders who had so unexpectedly delivered them from destruction, were vanishing like smoke on the air, into the middle distance.

And Wiglaf saw, in the thick of all those dim, bleak shapes, like a spark off of a hearth fire, like the gleam of a single star in a night filled with clouds, the briefest glitter of bright, shining gold.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lord of the Rings belong to their respective creators, Joss Whedon and J.R.R. Tolkien.

The reinforcements wasted no time in setting up camp. The captains gathered to confer on losses and equipment, to report and hear the latest news from Edoras, and Theodred ignored them all to go directly to his father's sister-son, Grimbold in tow, to tell him of what had occurred.

Eomer son of Eomund did not believe them.

"Pukel-men," he said flatly, disbelief in every tone and gesture, "riding to the aid of the Mark."

"I myself would not believe it," said Theodred, not at all offended, for he too looked as if he scarcely swallowed his own tale, "if I had not seen it with these eyes."

Wiglaf held the halters of the two horses Eomer had allotted them. They had not yet been fully battle-trained, and were unnerved and skittish at the smell of so much blood and Orc.

"Come with me," urged Theodred. "I am going to look for myself."

Eomer scowled.

Wiglaf was taken along, as the Prince's chief page had been gutted in the fighting and now lay bleeding to death back at the camp. Wiglaf carried Theodred's personal standard, rolled up and affixed to the saddle, and his horn, and rode just behind him.

The place of the battle that had routed the creatures of the Enemy was a field of frost-whitened corpses. Barely an hour old, no carrion birds yet flocked to the plucking and gorging, no animal tore at the meat. The horses picked their ways tentatively, rolling their eyes to show the white all around.

"A killing ground," said Eomer impassively, caustically, "and no bodies."

"The Pukels must have taken their stricken with them," said Gimbold, serious. "It's known well enough that they devour their dead."

Wiglaf and the other three who made up the escort, all men of the lower ranks, exchanged looks. One was nearly as young as Wiglaf himself, and they gave each other glances that were particularly worried.

Theodred walked his horse to an especially large corpse, that of an Uruk-hai arm-flailer. Dismounting, he took to a knee beside the body, shoved the reeking bulk back with a braced arm, and, reaching into the sodden, black-mulched dirt beneath the body, yanked something free with a wet squelch.

"They gathered their arrows," he said thoughtfully, standing again, shaking off the strips of blood and grass that clung to his leathers, "as they left—but missed a few."

He held up a thin, short, black shape.

Wiglaf felt his jaw slacken, heard the other boy's gasp. Grimbold cursed under his breath.

The arrow was stunted and fat, with nothing of the clean lines or wholesome length of good Eorlingian bowyer work. The shaft was thicker than Wiglaf had ever seen, and the fletching was round and black, with tips more like bristles than feathers.

Squat, and ugly—and with a small, piercing stinger of an arrowhead, whetted as sharp as a shaving knife, the point glistening as if coated with slime.

"The fangs of the Drugin," said Theodred. "The poisoned arrows of the Wild Men."

Wiglaf could not quite grasp the Prince's tone. Was he jubilant, or was he dismayed? Grimbold's face could have been carved from wood, and Eomer's was, as was his custom these recent months, a glare.

"Pukel-men," said Grimbold, and now his voice was troubled. "Pukels, riding on the Mark, waging war! What can this mean?"

No one had an answer for him, and Wiglaf bit his tongue to keep from asking if the Wild Men weren't beasts after all? His mother had threatened him into behaving as a baby and as a child with the warning that if he did not, the woses would come to get him, and those childhood terrors now seemed much truer to the youth than they had to the boy.

They spread out, blades bared against the chance of survivors, injured or unconscious or hiding, but they did it without much feeling. The silence was bleak and absolute. They were the only living who walked through these heaps of the dead.

Wiglaf followed Theodred at several paces, assuming it his role to keep a hand to their horses and his eyes wide. Not many yards away from where Theodred had found the arrow, the Prince stooped to examine another carcass, this of a Dunlending. "Eomer!"

The Prince's cousin went to him forthwith, and they bent over the body. Wiglaf could hear little of what they said together, but when they beckoned for Grimbold to join them, he made so bold as to go closer.

"Look here," Theodred was saying. "A straight blade did this, one much like my own. The wounds are too clean to be the work of axes or cudgels, as are most of the others."

It was so. Many of the bodies, most those farther afield, were smashed and crushed and splintered to death, with grotesquely misshapen skulls and shattered faces, bones sticking fractured from the flesh. Here, however, nearer what had obviously been the eye of the battle, the maelstrom of the fighting, the wounds were cleaner, sharper, cut instead of mashed, the bladework true and immaculate, and even Wiglaf's herdsman-turned-bannerman's eyes could see the beauty and mastery inherent in the brutality done.

The Prince stood silent, as did Eomer, and for a few moments no one said anything. Wiglaf felt bewildered by these silent looks they gave each other, by the severity of their expressions, and thought not for the first time that perhaps these matters were far too important and inexplicable for a herdsman's son, and that perhaps he hadn't done well at all to ask to be made a fighting man instead of apprenticing to the blacksmith, as his mother had wanted.

From the other side of the field, one of the other men, an older one, called out and raised his arm. Grimbold shouted in reply and made that way, and Eomer would have followed if Theodred had not hung back and, with a shake of his head, implied that Eomer should stay behind with him.

Wiglaf looked between them, torn between his duty to stand beside the Prince and the understanding that the Prince wanted to speak to his cousin privily. In the end, he settled for moving a few yards off upwind, so that he could stay close by and still make an effort not to hear anything.

Yet he could not help seeing, out of the corners of his eyes, as he tried to busy himself with the horses and keeping watch, the expressions on their faces. He saw Theodred's brows come together, saw the look of confusion and the struggle to remember both come into his eyes, as if he tried to explain a thing he himself was uncertain of. He saw Eomer's own glare relent into something more like worry as he listened to Theodred speak. Wiglaf saw how they leaned their heads closer together as Theodred's speech became firmer, more purposeful, his eyes becoming resolute, and Eomer began staring at him in a manner that was alarmed.

Then the wind changed, and Wiglaf's ears failed him.

"...her," Theodred said. "I saw, Eomer, I saw this woman! Her hair—"

"You were seeing the Sun reflected on a blade," Eomer returned. "You are worn out..."

Their voices faded, and Wiglaf was left with a heart that was pounding without explanation.

"And what?" Eomer said abruptly, angrily, and he spoke so loudly that Wiglaf heard him as clearly as the mustering horn. "You think someone has gathered the Wild Men, has made an army out of them? That hatred of the Wormtongue has—"

Theodred's eyes flashed, his own temper beginning to catch, and perhaps the Prince and his cousin would have had another of their shouts then and there if Grimbold had not just then hailed them, his voice like a clap of thunder from a hundred yards away.

Glaring at each other, Theodred and Eomer stalked off in Grimbold's direction, and Wiglaf hastened to follow.

At the northern end of the field, where the ground was the bloodiest and most of the Orcs, Dunlendings, and Uruk-hai had fallen face-first with their death-wounds in their backs, Grimbold stood over the corpse of a Dunlending chieftain, whose teeth-girdled throat had been slit from ear to ear.

"My lords," said Grimbold uneasily, and Wiglaf saw that his face, like the faces of the three men with him, was white. "My lords, see here..."

He motioned with his open palm at the chieftain's corpse, lying spread-eagled on his back, glazed, milky eyes staring up at the gray, cloud-covered sky. He had obviously been rolled over. Theodred stopped short as he caught sight of what Grimbold showed him, and Eomer, behind him, sucked in a mouthful of cold air.

Wiglaf, coming up behind them, peered through the gap between their two motionless forms, seeing for himself what they stared at when the wind whipped the Prince's cloak back and he had the room to see.

In his mind's eye, he glimpsed, again, the memory of that gleam of gold rising out of a mass of black, unshapely figures.

In the chieftain's right hand, clutched in filthy, crack-nailed fingers, was a fistful of golden hair, the strands glimmering like magic must glimmer in the hands of witches.


End file.
